


From the Mouths of Mothers

by lenainu



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Ants, Childhood, Drabbles, Gen, akane learning about the world, hue colour, old people of both generations, the children who disappear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-05-22 06:09:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6068062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lenainu/pseuds/lenainu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story from Akane's childhood, as I try to figure out why her hue is so consistently clear. On the innate cruelty of children, and the cruelty of ignorance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Once, Tsunemori Akane knew a boy who burnt ants alive.

She was four and they were both in pre-school. At first, she thought he was looking for something small because he was holding a magnifying glass in his hand - and she knew what that was because obaa-san used one when she was running paper books and Akane loved using it, even though she didn’t know how to read yet - and Akane had wanted to help the boy find whatever it was. Obaa-san always said the best thing you could do in life was help people.

The boy looked up at her when she spoke and grinned, then turned back to his task. Akane crouched down next to him, because she wasn’t put off helping people that easily. She was going to be a superhero, she had decided last week. She didn’t have any superpowers yet but obaa-san had pointed out all the superheroes in the pictures were adults, so Akane probably had to wait until she was an adult to get superpowers. Akane didn’t think she would ever be an adult, but she had nodded and not sighed, because she wasn’t going to give up that easily, and had decided to start her crusade without superpowers. Obaa-san had smiled at that, so Akane was happy.

Then she noticed the ants. They were ever so small and carrying little-little pieces of green leaves,walking in a row, like when the children at school had to line up outside class. Were the ants going to class then? Akane could see all their little legs through the magnifying glass and she decided she would have to try this at home. She could look at everything close-up, however tiny they were!

The boy scowled and said;

“Go ‘way,”

Akane looked at him, wide-eyed.

“Do you wanna be friends?” she asked, confused but deciding that was the best option.

“No!” the boy said. “You’re in my way!”

Akane blinked, then shuffled out of the direction the boy was pointing in. If she was in the way, she wasn’t helping him.

“What you looking for?” she asked.

“Nothing,” the boy shot back. “Watch!”

So she did, because it was a mystery and superheroes solved mysteries. Well, detectives did. Maybe she could be a detective-superhero! The boy tilting the magnifying glass for the sunlight created a beam through it, which was really cool. Like a torch, or a cell-phone light! He moved it around on the ground, though Akane couldn’t see why. Then he stopped it above an ant, which was nice for the ant, Akane guessed, in case it needed some more light. It was a bright day already, though. She was about to mention this to the boy when the ant started smoking. And then it stopped moving and was a black dot of burnt on the ground. The boy grinned and moved onto another ant. Akane’s mouth dropped open, then she grabbed at his magnifying glass.

“Stop it!” she said, “You can’t do that, it’s wrong.”

The boy pushed at her.

“Give it back, that’s mine!”

“Only if you promise to stop it.” Akane said sternly. She would help him. He just didn’t know it was wrong. Maybe he didn’t have an okaa-san to tell him that.

“But it’s fun,” the boy whined, trying to grab it back again, pushing at her. This time she did fall over. It didn’t hurt that much, because she was crouching down. It confused her more than anything. She frowned and stood up, brushing down her clothes.

“Stop fighting right now!” a teacher shouted, appearing next to them.

“I’m not fighting,” Akane said, folding her arms. “He was hurting the ants, and I had to stop him.”

The teacher frowned more at the both of them and said; “Come with me, we need to see the principal.”

Akane nodded. The boy started crying.

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” he bawled.

“You killed the ants!” Akane retorted, astonished that he would lie like that to a teacher. The teacher shook her head and harried them along.

Akane hadn’t been in the principal’s office before that day. The pre-school was attached to a primary school and so the principal spent more time on the primary school than the pre-school, unsurprisingly. It was done like that, however, because then the children wouldn’t feel bad, as changing from pre-school to an unknown primary school might make them. The toddlers could see the primary school and the children this way and so they wouldn’t be frightened. No one wanted children to be frightened; their mental state was far too fragile at their age.

“Stop crying,” the teacher told the boy. “Everything is okay, it’ll be fine.”

The boy slowly calmed, sniffing constantly.

“I didn’t-” he started.

“No, no, don’t worry about that,” the teacher said. “I don’t need to know about that. The principal just needs to see something.”

Akane didn’t understand what the fuss was about, although she felt guilty that the boy was crying, that it could be her fault.

“Sorry,” she said, patting the boy on the shoulder. He ignored her, looking at the principal instead. They were both at that age were any adult seemed like a giant figure of authority to them, so having the principal’s attention directly on them - when they had only seen him from the distance before - was daunting. The principal opened his mouth and said;

“Stand apart, the two of you.”

They obeyed, quickly. Then he touched something on his wrist and a ray of light came out and swept over the boy. He repeated it on Akane, his face inscrutable. The boy was still sniffling, the snot glistening on his lip. The principal gestured to the teacher and whispered something in her ear. Akane hated it when adults whispered things. Whispering was supposed to be a kids game, but adults stole it all the time and then told you not to whisper!

“Come with me,” the teacher said, holding her hand out to the boy. “You can go back to the playground,” she said to Akane, smiling. The boy burst into tears again.

“I don’t wanna go!” the boy cried, and the teacher and the principal shared a look that Akane couldn’t understand.

“Shh, shh,” the teacher said to the boy. “You’re not going anywhere. We just need to call your parents and have a chat with them. You like your mom and dad, don’t you? You can get to talk to them when we call, okay?”

“Not going?” the boy asked.

“No, not going anywhere,” the teacher assured him. “Go and play,” she repeated to Akane, forcedly. Akane went.

 * * *

The boy who killed ants wasn’t there the next day.

Akane went to obaa-san to talk about it, because she knew it was her fault, somehow. She didn’t cry about it, because Akane the superhero didn’t cry. The boy cried. Obaa-san sat Akane in her lap and plaited her hair.

“Akane-hime,” she said. “You’re a very lucky girl.”

Akane nodded, because she knew that. She had obaa-san and okaa-san and otou-san and Sora. The nod pulled her hair out of obaa-san’s hands, but obaa-san just unraveled the plait, which was silly of her. Sometimes obaa-san let Akane do her hair. Akane liked obaa-san’s hair. It was silver-grey-black like Sora’s fur and the clouds Akane had named Sora for.

“But where’s the boy gone?” Akane asked.

Obaa-san shook her head. “I don’t know, probably just to a different school.”

“Didn’t want him to go,” Akane said stubbornly. “Wanted to be friends.”

“I know,” Obaa-san said, threading her fingers through Akane’s hair, brushing it slowly. “But you have a clear hue and it sounds like he didn’t, so he had to go somewhere else. ”

“Don’t care about my hue.” Akane said.

Obaa-san laughed. “And I don’t care about mine. But you should be more careful with other peoples. You have a clear hue because you always want to help,”

“Superhero Akane!” she shouted, punching one fist to the sky.

“Yes, super-helper Akane, I think.” Obaa-san said, smiling. “But other people don’t always want to help and because they don’t care, their hearts cloud up.”

“I like clouds,” Akane said. She didn’t know what Obaa-san was saying any more. Why wouldn’t people want to help? And why hues then hearts then the sky?

Obaa-san suddenly hugged her tightly.

“Obaa-san?” Akane asked tentatively.

“It’s nothing,” Obaa-san said. “I just wish-” she trailed off, then looked down at Akane. “Sometimes,” she said carefully. “It’s better not to tell when someone does something wrong, like the boy, at least not straight away. People should be allowed second chances.”

 


	2. Who Likes Change

“Obaa-san,” Akane asked one day, on holiday from university. “Were all those stories true?”

They were sitting on the deck of the house. Akane’s feet could touch the ground now. Sometimes, it felt like she had lived here forever, that the world was nothing more than the sky and the sunlight weaving between the trees.

A smile touched the edge of her grand-mother’s mouth. “Which ones?”

“All of them,” Akane replied, smiling back for a moment. “The ones about planes and the ocean and-” She lowered her voice for this one. “War.”

A crease formed between her grand-mother’s eyes. She said: “I don’t tell stories about war.”

Akane wasn’t stupid enough to not recognize fear when she saw it, but she couldn’t tell who the fear was for. Obaa-san glanced back inside, at the glow from within. The new avatar that the home help had insisted Obaa-san get after she tripped and broke her hip. Obaa-san hadn’t wanted it. Akane couldn’t really imagine her life without one. Maybe she just didn’t have a good imagination.

“About the planes, then.” Akane said. “Were they true?”

Obaa-san huffed, mock-angry. “What are they teaching you in the city? Of course they’re true.”

“But-” Akane started, then stopped. Her grand-mother waited. “But, no one goes outside.”

That was true. Why would anyone want to go outside? There was nothing out there. Only desolation, old temples to war.

“I did,” Obaa-san replied.

Akane looked at her. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard this story before. It was that it had been a story, before.

“You’re not that old,” she said, trying to turn it into a joke. She didn’t know why. She had never thought of herself as someone who needed to dissemble. Not to Obaa-san.

Obaa-san, who only sighed. “Akane,” she said, almost sternly. “You can’t learn everything from books.”

It was a bizarre thing to say. Akane had never learnt anything from books. She had hardly even seen any books.

Obaa-san shook her head, pressed a hand against her eyes momentarily. “Avatars then,” she said. “Sorry, Akane-hime, I’m just tired.”

“Aren’t you sleeping well?” Akane asked, all thoughts of planes and stories leaving her mind. “You can program your avatar to play soothing music, you know, or-”

“No,” Obaa-san said. “The avatar’s the problem.”

Akane found that she had to lean in to hear her. She didn’t understand why Obaa-san was whispering. It felt like she was a child again, looking up at adults and wondering what they were talking about, that she couldn’t hear it. Of course, she had grown up now, and people whispered a lot less than before.

“Is it defective?” Akane asked, not really sure she was asking the question. Everyone knew the avatars were never defective. That wouldn’t be allowed. People had to be safe after all, and a person wasn’t safe with a defective avatar.

It was only a rumor.

Akane tried to think of who she would contact to report the avatar. She had no idea, apart from the police.

Obaa-san laughed. It wasn’t a particularly happy sound, and that only made Akane worry more. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I just- wish it wasn’t there. I’ve managed my whole life without one, after all.”

Akane really didn’t understand her grand-mother. “First time for everything, right?” she said.

Obaa-san didn’t say anything back. It was so unlike her.

“Are you okay?” Akane asked, reached out to hold her hand.

Obaa-san pressed her hand and then stood up. “Don’t worry, Akane-hime,” she said. “I’m fine. I’ll cook for you: I don’t trust whatever they feed you at that university. You look skinnier every time I see you.”

“I’m not!” Akane protested, more with relief than any complaint, and followed her inside.

She didn’t remember to ask about the stories again.


End file.
